Burt Jones’s Re-Build Diary

[Bob Green]

Wonderful, absolutely 'kin wonderful!  Who is this man?

I read a thread that suggested he should write a feature for the Westfield mag.  If he does, his literary talent will ensure the next issue will be delivered in a Kalamazoo box file.

Please keep us up to date with the diary.

[Bert Jones's Diary]

Friday, July 12

Corner weight: Chanced upon a guy with a Robin Hood in the B&Q car park. He was tying an 8 by 4 sheet of faux-marble Formica to his rollbar which he planned to use to make new bonnet. We started chatting, he seemed to know his mechanical onions so I mentioned my problems with corner weights. He sucked on a tooth and told me I had it all wrong: corner weight is the amount of G-force applied to the car as you go around a bend, not a static measurement of each corner. Laugh, I could have cried, when I think about the months I’ve spent trying to weigh the bl**** car’s corners.

8:30am – Westfield World arrives in the post, read it while I munch through a bowl of Albran. Thought the "Readers’ Drives" section was excellent, and even managed to find 2 pages that didn’t mention the Speed Series.

09:25am – in the garage. Fire up the mighty Xflow for the first time. Imagine an asthmatic Barry White trying to give a sputum sample and you’ve a rough idea what my expensive engine sounded like. Spanner, rubbing his weak chin, nodded at the carburettors and said, “accelerator pumps.” Ignoring his vacuous comment, I straightened up the nearside cycle-wing then fiddled with the throttle linkage until he took the hint and wandered off to put the kettle on. Firing up the engine again I guessed from the stench of unburnt fuel that maybe the carbs were running rich, although what this meant in practical terms was beyond me.  

12:15pm – rang the tech help guy at Kingwinford and asked if he had some fix for rich carbs. He asked me some smart-arsed question about jet sizes or something so I told him to feck off and slammed the phone down. The bl**** cheek of these Northern yokels you ask a perfectly sensible question and they respond by taking the p***.

2:30pm – Relate offices. On the advice of the wife’s psychiatrist we go to our first session. In the  room we’re faced across the coffee stained table by a pair of poe-faced Relate counsellors. The female counsellor, who looks like Quasimodo’s uglier sister, immediately wades in about me sublimating my sexual inadequacy into cars and the detrimental effect this is having on the wife's mental state. I sit and pretend to listen, while my mind works on a plan for building a G-force gauge. A coughing brings me back to the room. The scrawny male counsellor, looking down the impressive length of his nose, is asking if my car obsession is a decompensation anxiety. Pretending I’m remotely interested I play the game and tell him my only problem is a misfiring engine. To my surprise he suggests checking to see if the carbs aren’t bolted too tightly to the head. Turns out he’s just built a Pilgrim Sumo and for the rest of the session we get along famously while the women fold their arms and glare at us venomously.

6:29pm  – on the WSCC site. Put the carb problem in the Newbie section using one of my aliases. Wouldn’t do for the lads to think I knew slightly less that nothing about fuel delivery. What I was hoping for was concise linear answers that would help me track the problem. What I got eclectic lateral with everything being blamed from the car’s carpets to a ruptured fuel pump rubber. I think I’ll book a session on the rolling-road.

11:37pm – decide to give up smoking tomorrow. Went to bed and fell asleep giggling at the prices in the Catterham part catalogue.

Dream of mother-in-law getting 3rd degree burns on her buttocks after inadvertently sitting on the Westfields hot exhaust.

[westy]

 

[Paul Helsby]

Please please, who ever you are keep this up it's brilliant, even the wife laughed, in fact she laughed so much she nearly fell off the ladder and dropped the wall paper paste all over the floor.

Thanks, more please  

[chrisbin]

         

[Mrs Westy]

Who is this man?

Please please, who ever you are

Let's examine the evidence:

  A dab hand at story telling

Starting the thread with   ,    or similar

"put the carb problem in the Newbie section using one of my aliases"

"seroxat"

"...tie the lid down as best we can and head for Oxford"

and some other small giveaways lead me to believe that stu999 was quite correct in his greeting

Evening Pisvladtiffquentgirlynonameperson.  

Mrs W  

PS Why Burt in the title and Bert in the name  

[Mark Stanton]

         

[Paul Hurdsfield - Joint Manchester AO]

Well done mr Pistoff  

obviously Oxford and literary talent go well together  

just remember the closing date for the next mag is 20th Jan

so get writing    dont let all that talent go to waste  

[Bert Jones's Diary]

Friday, August 14

Corner weight: Went to Bishop’s Finger with Spanner, Grease Gun and Mark Darcy (the Robin Hood owner with the Formica bonnet) primarily to work out a way measuring the Westfield’s cornering G-force. Darcy brought along the 4 miniature trebuchets he’d used for calibrating his Robin Hood. Apparently you fix the devices on each wing with a counter-weight attached to the firing mechanisms then go for a blat. As the car traverses a bend the G-force acts on the counter-weight and fires the trebuchets. If the car is set up correctly, all four should fire at the same time. Simple and brilliant.

09:15am – the new exhaust system arrived. Absolutely gorgeous; polished stainless, big-bore manifold squeezing itself into phallic shaped, scarcely legal stainless “silencer” and topped off with a cute Westfield logo laser cut into the bespoke heat shield. I snuck into the garage with the exquisite system and danced about the Westfield taunting my faithful old mild-steel exhaust with it’s replacement. Glanced up to see Grease Gun leaning against the garage door shaking his head. "Just doing some aerobics from the Graham Hill fitness video,” I mumble, trying to hide my burning face.

10:20am – still in the garage. Hit a bizarre problem with the new wiring loom which might be related to the tumble-drying it inadvertently received. While I was fitting the loom I wired in a couple of speakers and a jack-plug so I could play my Kylie compilations on the minidisk at a later date. All was well until I turned on the ignition and Radio 5 blasted out the left speaker with some Arab hollering to the faithful out of the right. To complicate matters, when I used the side-lights the Arab was replaced by a breathless hussy offering strange and unusual phone-sex to a panting punter. Flicking off the side-lights and turning on the heater bade farewell to Radio 5, kept the hussy and introduced Ambulance control. Using the indicators replaced the hussy with Terry Wogan on one flash and some rapper called DJ Ice-Udders on the other, augmented by the World Service when I honked the horn. I’d heard urban legends about people receiving radio waves via the fillings in their  teeth, but this was spooky. I liked it.

1:25pm – Relate Offices. The wife was giving large about the strain of being married to a car obsessive while Miss Quasimodo nodded sympathetically causing 3 or 4 of her chins to wobble like jelly stalactites. Geoffrey, the Pilgrim owning counsellor, looked as bored as I felt and, through a series of clandestine hand-signals, managed to convey that I should try advancing the Westfield’s ignition timing to see if that eradicated the misfire.

4:32pm – Phoned Kingwinford to ask if they wanted first refusal on my new soon-to-be-patented multi-media loom. Put through to some woman who listened tolerantly then asked if I was on prescribed medication. When I said no, cheeky cow said I should be and put the phone down. Went back to the garage, sat in the Westfield flicked on the fog-lights and listened to Capital Radio while I mulled over the problem of the demonically possessed Catterham cycle wings.

8:46pm - Quiff and Salami, public house. There’s just no pleasing some women. It’s our wedding anniversary today so, as a treat, I took the wife out for a slap-up pub meal; a ploughman’s with all the pickled onions she can eat. Ok, so it was the same night as the Westfield monthly meet, and I did have a quick chat to the boys, although nothing like the 2 hours she accused me of. Ok, I did get slightly drunk and she had to drive me home but, the thought was there. Still, I’m sure the old girl’ll forgive me when she sees the air-compressor and pneumatic tools I’ve brought her as an anniversary present.

10:45pm – wife’s gone to bed in a huff and I’m on the computer. Crack open a bottle of Spanish vodka and fire up the Google. Take a hefty slug of blistering vodka and type in: Xflow and bl**** and misfiring. Informs me I’ve committed a syntax error or some such b*****k* and I should refine my search. This is inane, (take another slug of vodka) if I knew what I was searching for I wouldn’t need the ******g computer to search for it. Type: Xflow, and hit search again. Great, 4,390 results. Take another long pull on the vodka bottle, listen to make sure I can hear the wife snoring upstairs and type: midgets and sex and animals.

11:59pm – decide to give up smoking tomorrow. Went to bed and fell asleep reading Mr. Fixit’s stainless steel nut and bolt catalogue.

Dream the mother-in-law was lobotomised after the Westfield’s cooling fan flew off and imbedded itself in her forehead

[damianc]

your name is Willam Boroughs and I claim my £5 prize

Any advice on how to approach the castle welcome

K.

[westy]

   

[damianc]

Ironic isn't it, that God gave the tortoise a drag factor of 0.03

Bad news for aeschylus.  According to Zeno it shouldn't have happened

| not enough rioja mode>

[Bert Jones's Diary]

Saturday, September 10

Corner weight: Darcy came around in his Hood to demonstrate his medieval system of corner weight measuring. Using Blue-Tac, he fixed the trebuchets onto the Hoods wings. We then went for a blat and my first ride in a Robin Hood. The floral pattern, bri-nylon seats are armchair soft. I look again and realise they are armchairs. Darcy’s made subtle use of kitchen fixtures and fittings in the cockpit and using a modified garlic crusher as an ignition cut-out switch was inspired. The lino covered floor is a bit slippery and the chip-board dash, painted in mauve emulsion was definitely an acquired taste. Our first serious bend and the nearside trebuchet fired, causing the rear wing to fall off. Darcy insisted this was normal for Hoods because of their racing heritage all external parts needed to be quickly detachable to speed up pit stop times.

09:15am – Relate offices. Faced across the table by the wife and Miss Quasimodo, looking very Essex in a tangerine and mauve shell suit which clashes dreadfully with her ginger moustache. I comment about Pilgrim-owning Geoffrey absence and was told he’d been moved to a more deserving case. Quasi kicks the session off with a psychobabble rant about me acting like some obsessive, sexual retard with homo-erotic penis-envy. I tell she’s talking b*****k*, and make a mental note to go to the library and lookup homo-erotic penis-envy.

10:32am – in the garage. Flicked on the Westfield’s fog lights and listen to Virgin Radio. With Grease Gun’s help I remove the old exhaust system. Trying to fit the new manifold throws up an immediately problem, the exit hole in body work is in the wrong place. Essentially, I’ve got two choices: move the hole or move the engine. Pace about like an anxious father-to-be while Grease Gun takes umpteen measurements and taps numbers into his sola-calculator. Finally he grins and says, “If we tilt the engine over by about 18 degrees and move it forward by 7 inches the manifold should line up with the hole." ****e. Obviously the existing engine mounts will have to be binned and new ones fabricated. In the meantime we put the old system back on and finish off the Spanish vodka while designing the new mounts.

11:21am – log onto the WSCC to ask about engine mounts. Get side-tracked by some guy calling himself Snot Green, giving it large about the BHP of his Cossie engined SEi. Snot claims his car puts out slightly more power than a Jumbo jet and wants more. I log out and log back in again under the nom de plume, Scatman, and say I’ve squeezed three 280bhp 4rage engines under my SE’s bonnet and need help finding a rolling road that can handle the power output. I’m gob-smacked when one bloke asks if I’m using a Westfield supplied exhaust system and another wants to know what pedal-box I’ve got in the car.

12:10pm – hiding upstairs until the wife leaves for Sainsbury’s with her mother; I’m sure the old bat deliberately continues to breath just annoying me. When the coast is clear I creep down and phone Kingwinford to order a new part. The Brummie fools can’t find any of the 6 they apparently have in stock so they’ll ring me back. Give strict instructions if the wife answers they’re to say they’re from the Gas Board.

12:32pm – in the garage. The bl**** wings have twisted away from their mounts again despite using up my entire supply of Rivnuts. Stomp indoors and phone Catterham. Waited for 30 minutes listening to Barry Manilow before being put through to a salesman who was marginally less helpful than a corpse. After much persuasion, he finally conceded and transferred me through to a technician. This guy made the salesman seem positively animated. I explained the problem, he sucked a capped-tooth then grunted, “Catterham wings are specifically designed only to work with Catterham bracketry.” That didn’t sound right so I asked him how he knew I wasn’t using their brackets. “Because real Catterham owners," he sniffed, "aren’t the sort of working class plebs who’d grubby their manicured finger nails on such prosaic tasks as actually building their own cars."

7:20pm – home from work. No dinner ready and the wife’s not in. Find a note on the kitchen table:

Dear Bert,

Gone out for a meal with Prunella (that nice Relate counsellor you keep calling Miss Quasimodo) will probably be back late so don’t wait up.

Love

Mary

Ps The Gas Board phoned up to say they have found roll bars and wanted to know if you wanted it in chrome or black.

b*******, I new this would happen. What should I do? After much thought decide to order the chrome roll-bar.

8:14pm – log onto computer. At a whim visit the Friendsreunited site for the first time to see how many of my ex-class mates are dead or in gaol. One name immediately jumps out at me like a Hampstead flasher, Cheryl Shingles, the unrequited love of my 14 year old life. Without thinking of the possible ramifications I send her an email and attach a picture of me taken 10 years ago.

8:45pm – log onto Blatchat. Lots of anxiety about Birkin out Catering Catterham. It felt like I was invading their personal grief so to cheer them up I said Kylie was using a Birkin in her latest video but not to worry because Pete Townsend had just taken delivery of a Super 7 and Catterham had just secure the rights to use Gary Glitter’s seminal Leader of the Gang on their future promos.

11:20pm - decide to give up smoking tomorrow. Went to bed and fell asleep reading Westfield SEight Modular Kit brochure. Didn’t notice the wife was still out.

Dream the mother-in-law is looses all her fingers when she tried to play Frisbee with one of the Westfield’s unfitted alloy panels

[neilwillis]

Do Westfields manufacture a chipboard mauve dash too?

That would look superb with my tiger skin seat covers.

What is the legal position on furry dice.   Will they get through SVA?

[Bert Jones's Diary]

Monday, September 16

Corner weight: Need to sober up after a night on the town with Spanner and Grease Gun, so we stop off at our local Kebab emporium for a large, garlic donna and chips. For me it was one of those defining eureka moments. As I was handed my kebab the paper split open and sliver of over-spiced, under-cooked goat fell out and landed on my boot. Glancing at the mess, I was struck by the way the garlic sauce had spread out over the brown leather of my Dr Martin  and, in that second, I realised D’Arcy was wrong. Corner weight had nothing to do with G-force and everything to do with spread of static weight over the four corners of the car. Leaping up, I high-fived the air and shouted “Yee-haa,” and did a little jig around my bemused friends. In future, I decided, problem solving would be done with a brain well lubricated with Hook-Norton.

7:30am – in the garage. With Spanner and Grease Guns help, unbolted the engine and hoisted it into it’s new position before making card-board mock-ups of the engine mounts; which will be eventually made up into metal replicas. Unfortunately, cranking the engine over 18 degrees has caused the carbs to hit the top frame rail. Spanner reckons the rail is only there to act as a support for the bonnet so it would be OK to chop out a section of a foot or so. Decide to check with the club before getting out the hacksaw.    

9:10am – sitting at computer. Log onto WSCC site and ask, what I consider to be a perfectly serious construction (deconstruction?) question about hacking out part of the upper frame rail. Reaction is divided between those who think I’m barking and those that harangue me thinking I’m a lurking Blat-chatter on a p***-taking foray. The Club Secretary sends me a Personal Message stating I will be given a life time ban if I proceed with my plan.  

10:16am – back in the garage. Stand over the Westfield with hacksaw in my shaking hand trying to decide where to cut. Take a deep breath and prepare to saw. Mobile text-message bleep goes off. Turns out to be a message from the Samaritans asking me to phone them before I do anything drastic. Seems they were tipped off by WSCC chairman.

3:32pm – sitting at computer. Find an email waiting for me from Cheryl Shingles saying she’d love to meet up. She also encloses a couple of grainy black and white head shots. I note Cheryl’s claiming not to be married and to have put on a few pounds. Nevertheless, I ring her and a few moments later we’ve agreed a date for the following week. I decide to take the Westfield whatever it’s roadworthiness.

4:10pm – roll-bar arrives. Thankfully the wife’s just taken her Trazadone so is virtually comatose on the sofa. I don’t think I could take another bout of hysterical crying at the moment. Creep out in the garage and unwrap a chrome, millimetre thick, poorest excuse for a roll bar I’ve ever seen. Phone the Kingwinford. “You’ve sent me the wrong bl**** roll bar you Northern ******s,” I shout into the phone.

“Just a minute, sir,” says the nasally constricted Brummie. A moment later, “No, sir, you’ve got the right one. It’s our special SSS roll-bar.”

“SSS?”

“Yes, sir, Soft Southern ****e roll-bar.”    

7:30pm – go to the area meeting. Find the lads in the car park embroiled in a “yard-nut” contest with a group of scruffy, belligerent Catterham owning yobs. Apparently the rules of the contest are simple: with a member of the opposite team sitting in your passenger seat you have to try and complete as many smoking donuts as you can before they can drink a yard-of-ale. I take the opportunity to examine the front stays of a Super7 to see how the cycle wings are attached. The competition is eventually won by Johnny Blimmy-Rodent driving a Chevy powered Catterham, who completed 4 donuts then did a lap of honour round the car park while his passenger, the WSCC Area Organiser no less, performed a spectacular display Catherine-Wheel projectile vomiting.

9:20pm – Wife out with Miss Quasi again. Also changed her hairstyle, had a nose-ring fitted and now sports a tattoo of a rearing Bison on her left buttock. Nice to see her taking interests outside of how much the Westfield is costing.

10:15pm – message left on my answer-phone by the local police who are investigating a gang who specialise in the theft of kitcar parts. An ice-chill runs through my bowels as the curse of the cycle-wings continues.  

11:20pm - decide to give up smoking tomorrow. Went to bed and fell asleep reading Jeremy Clarkson’s autobiography,  “From Motoring to Macramé – a man and his ego.”  

Dream the mother-in-law has a pulmonary-embolism while trying to clean sweetcorn out of her dentures with my compressed airline.